Donald Trump woke up this morning and decided to push two messages. First, he’s not mentally unstable. Second, he’s a genius. He didn’t try to do this by demonstrating his stability or intellect; instead he simply declared himself to be a “stable genius” in those exact words on Twitter. After everyone finished rolling their eyes and laughing, Trump tried holding a press conference and managed to make things even worse.

Trump began the day with this stunning multi-part tweet: “Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence. Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!”

Several observers have pointed out that none of this comes particularly close to his usual writing style and structure, raising the question of whether he wrote this or one of his staffers did. Either way, we’ve reached the point where the leading popular discussion about Trump is indeed about whether he’s stupid and whether he’s crazy – and it’s so pervasive that Trump himself (or his staff) feels compelled to push back against it. But then came the press conference.

After his tweets, Donald Trump appeared before the cameras with a horrified looking Republican leadership at Camp David. Trump used the press conference to spend even more time trashing the new “Fire and Fury” book which reveals that all of his top staffers think he’s crazy and stupid. He then insisted that he’s not even under investigation, while accusing Hillary Clinton of colluding with the Russians. So much for being a stable genius.

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